


with you the good and bad comes through

by tinyscienceangels



Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, editing what's that, i haven't written fic in 5 years how do tags work, in which Ben is the best friend you could ever ask for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 03:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,800
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27907132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinyscienceangels/pseuds/tinyscienceangels
Summary: AU where everything is the same but episode 68 doesn't exist and Sammy comes out to Ben after Ben's surprise night off
Relationships: Ben Arnold & Sammy Stevens, Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Comments: 5
Kudos: 46





	with you the good and bad comes through

**Author's Note:**

> trigger warning for canon-typical suicidal ideation and internalized homophobia
> 
> Title is from Best Imitation of Myself by Ben Folds Five (this is also the title of episode 68 and no this is not a coincidence)

Sammy was having a breakdown. Not that this wasn’t his constant state of being, but, you know.

Lily had no fucking right. She knew, and she’d done it anyways, spat it out on air like it was nothing. Like this had all been nothing, like she didn’t know everything about him, about what this meant.

Sammy wasn’t a stranger to small towns. He’d grown up in one and knew exactly how they burned. He knew how the locals talk if you take even one odd step. You were born inside of a box, one that came with pages upon pages of rules you must follow faultlessly. These rules were stagnant and unchanging. Once you were given your box, just one out of thousands of identical copies, you were expected to stay inside its boundaries, and bad things happened to those who strayed.

There had been one kid in Sammy’s hometown that had done this. He either didn’t read his rules, or he didn’t care. They had not been friends, but small towns survived off nothing but gossip and tradition, so Sammy knew. His name had been Nolan. Nolan had come out to his family one night, and the next, he was a social pariah with a broken wrist. Sammy was a coward, so instead of being a good person, Sammy watched Nolan as he was shoved in the hallways, and as he sat alone in the cafeteria wearing headphones that drowned out the nightmare he lived in, and Sammy made a vow to never make that same mistake.

Sammy had kept his promise, mostly, but here he was, just as much of a coward at 33 as he had been at 15. He’d kept his promise, but it didn’t matter. Lily had all but spelled it out for all of them, and it was only a matter of time until Sammy became the thing he’d feared so much.

Everyone knew, and they would hate him, and they would leave him, and he would be left with nothing. Every day without Jack had been agony, but he’d survived it because of people like Troy, and Mary, and Emily, and Ben. Without them –– he knew he’d lost them; he couldn’t picture any reality where he hadn’t –– he had nothing. Without Jack there was no future, and without Ben he had no use for the present.

 _Holy shit, Ben._ Ben had been gone, Ben didn’t know. He could … Sammy wilted. Ben didn’t know, but he would soon. This might be a weird-ass town, but it was still a small town built on gossip and tradition. In fact, gossip was the only tradition that made any goddamn sense.

But. Ben didn’t know _yet_. Maybe Sammy could still salvage this. He could pin it on Lily being willing to say anything she thought might grant her some attention, say that Lily was a liar and a bitch and that Lily didn’t believe in any of this so why should any of us believe a goddamn word that comes from her mouth?

Sammy’s shift had finished an hour ago and he was sitting in his bare-bones apartment, staring at the wall. He knew he should try to get some sleep, but Sammy didn’t sleep much these days. How could he? On the best days, he’d get two or three hours in a row, which were usually interrupted when he woke up gasping from a nightmare. He’d wake up and reach for Jack as he caught his breath, and it was almost laughable how pathetic it was. Jack wasn’t there. Jack hadn’t been there in years, and in Sammy’s worst moments he wondered whether Jack had ever been there at all.

Sammy knew that if he did get any sleep, it would be right here on this shitty couch he’d bought off someone on Craigslist. Even his usual post-work routine (if you could call it that) sounded like far more effort than he had the energy for.

Many of his mornings looked like this –– lock the door and throw the car keys in a random spot on the kitchen counter, change out of the day’s clothes (that is, if he’d bothered to get dressed at all) and collapse on the mattress. He didn’t sleep. If it was one of those days that his mind wouldn’t stop spinning, he’d make himself a cup of coffee and take a shower, somewhat hoping that he’d drown. On others, he’d open the top drawer of his dresser and stare at the little black box nestled in the corner. Sometimes he’d open it up and look at it, try to memorize the shine of the silver and of the way that Jack’s eyes had welled with tears when he offered the ring to Sammy.

These were the days he got the best sleep, the days spent memorizing every detail of every memory until he couldn’t keep his eyes open, followed by golden memories reflected in his dreams, too. Moments of laughter played behind his eyelids and for a few hours, Sammy was back in the only place he’d ever been safe.

But sometimes, more often than not these days, Sammy was like this. So stuck in this grief and nothingness that he couldn’t even make it to the bedroom, so he slumped into the couch wishing he could be absorbed into the matter and would never have to emerge. He wasn’t sure how long he laid there this time. A few minutes, a few hours, a few days?

He’d been inching closer by the day, but today had confirmed everything. Sammy was done. He’d tell Ben whatever he needed to say to cover his tracks, and that would be it. He’d been here nearly three years now, and nothing. Good try, right? If Jack could be found, if not Sammy, if not Lily, someone would have found him, but he was not a single step closer. Not one. Sammy may understand more about King Falls now than he had before, but he was just as close to finding Jack as he had been the day he'd disappeared, three years ago, almost to the day. His contract ended in May, and Sammy sunk further thinking about it. May was so far away. Maybe he could buy out his contract or something. He’d figure it out. He’d get out of his contract and get out of this place and disappear. He had no Jack, and everyone else hated him too, so there was nothing left for him here. There was nothing left for him anywhere.

Sammy must have fallen asleep at some point, because now there was light peeking through his drawn blinds, but that didn’t make sense. He couldn’t have slept. He would have dreamed about Jack, or he would have woken up in a cold sweat as he rubbed away an image of Jack’s body floating somewhere in the abyss (this was presently a personal favorite of his subconscious). But he didn’t. He was just awake, with sun peeking through, and had dreamed of nothing. Maybe this was his body’s way of telling him that it was time. That it could be like this –– just nothingness, until the end of forever. It would be a welcome reprieve.

But then, someone was banging on his apartment door. He squinted at it. _What the fuck_. He peeled himself away from the couch long enough to peer at his phone, where he saw it was 10 am, and he had 11 missed calls, and several text messages. Um, _what?_

A couple from Lily. He deleted them immediately without looking. But the many others were all from Ben

The banging on his door didn’t falter. It got faster, and then things got louder. “If you’re in there Sammy, let me in before I knock it down. Don’t fucking test me, man. I have medium levels of rage at all times and you know I’ll try.” Ah. Yep, that made sense. Sammy would know Ben’s screech anywhere.

Sammy would have preferred to have this talk anywhere else. Maybe at Rose’s Diner, or at Ben’s place so he’d have the option to leave when he was finished. Sammy sighed. Fine. Sammy opened the door and while he expected to see Ben there, he hadn’t expected him to look so, frazzled?

Ben pulled Sammy into a hug, and Sammy just felt guilt. Ben wouldn’t be doing this if he knew. Ben wouldn’t be here if he knew. “Dude, I called you like 8 times! I know you don’t answer your email or even look at it but I know you know how to use a phone.”

“Uh, why are you here?” Sammy asked, and Ben closed the door behind them. He didn’t have car keys, or his phone, or anything. Had he walked here? To add to the oddity of it all, he looked like he hadn’t slept, or, if he had, that he had very recently woken up. His hair was a mess, and his clothes were wrinkled, and there was definitely a stain of some sort on his sleeve. Not that Sammy looked better, but Sammy was kind of over this whole _living_ thing so looking like a person was the least of his worries.

“Emily dropped me off on our way back. She’ll give me a ride later, it’s fine,” he said, shrugging it off. “Lily called me.”

Sammy had been a little confused until this point, but now he was confused and angry. What kind of business did Lily have contacting Ben? Unless. Sammy froze, not long enough for anyone who wasn’t Ben to notice, but this was Ben, who when he wasn’t going off on rage-filled tangents or scribbling in notebooks, noticed everything. “Excuse me, what did you just say? Lily called you?” Sammy was angry at Lily for a lot of reasons, but she wouldn’t. She did a lot of things he did not morally agree with (like a _podcast)_ but he wanted to believe that she wouldn’t fucking out him. Not that she hadn’t basically done that earlier this morning, but she wouldn’t do it on purpose.

“Yeah? I didn’t really understand it either. She called, said some shit I didn’t understand, but definitely said your name at some point, and then hung up. I don’t know what it meant but I think she’s worried about you, so I called you to see if you might know what she was talking about, but you didn’t answer, so we came back.”

“You didn’t have to – hold on, where even were you? Taking a last-minute night off is fine, but why?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll tell you later, but on the way back I got to thinking that why would Lily be worried about you? You _hate_ her, which I don’t get because Wright On is journalistic gold, but whatever, not the point. I’m just – I never asked because I thought it wasn’t my business but then she called me about you and, Sammy, how do you really know Lily? The first time you mentioned her you acted like she’d killed your whole family and –”

“Ben, I –”

“ – I assumed that you were just radio show rivals back in the day or something and I know you can be petty, and that’s fine, you do you, but you just hate her so much and I want to understand. Did you know that her brother went missing? Jack, I think she called him. Emily and I listened to her latest episode of Wright On and you’re not going to like to hear this but she’s hurting a lot, I think, and if you know enough about Lily to hate her this much, I think you’re being a little unfair to her. And look, I get why you might –”

“Ben, I need you to shut the fuck up right now. You don’t have a clue what you’re talking about,” Sammy snapped, turning his back and walking away. Sammy loved Ben, he did, but if Ben didn’t shut his mouth about owing Lily some grace, Sammy might punch him. He wouldn’t feel good about it, but he would certainly do it.

“That’s exactly my point! I don’t! Explain it to me! Help me understand!” Ben said, following Sammy back to the living room, back to the shitty couch and the bare walls and the carpet that had seen better days.

Sammy had half a mind to turn right back around push Ben out the door. Sammy didn’t care to be insulted, and he especially didn’t care to hear Jack’s name come out of Ben’s mouth like that when Ben didn’t know who Jack was to him. 

But. Ben planted himself on the couch and was looking up at Sammy with such desperation. Sammy didn’t want to know what business Lily had contacting Ben like that, but if Ben was telling the truth –– he usually was –– Ben had immediately called Sammy, and then called several more times in the hopes that Sammy was okay. Whatever lies Lily had fed him, Ben had come here. Sammy broke, and gasped.

“Sammy, what –”

Sammy sat on the other end of the couch, and he pulled his long legs up to his chest. “Ok. Ben. There are, well, there are some things that I have not told you. A lot of things I have not told you. And I’m going to tell you. If you decide after that this is a dealbreaker, you can leave. I don’t want you to feel obligated to keep caring about me.”

“Sammy, what are you talking about, I’ll always care about you. You can tell me anything, you know that. You’re my best fucking friend.”

Sammy wanted so badly to tell Ben that the same applied to him, but he couldn’t. He could only sit and feel his heart caving into his chest. The last time he’d had a conversation like this, it had been with Jack, and he’d been scared shitless. Then Jack had told him that he was gay too, and the days that followed were the beginnings of the best thing that had ever happened to Sammy. Now, he felt nothing but fear. No slivers of hope this time. Just fear. “Don’t. I don’t want you to say anything you’ll regret, ok? Just listen to me first, and know that if you want me to leave, I will. You can tell me to pack my bags, and I’ll find you a new co-host, and I’ll leave you alone.”

“Sammy.” Ben said, and Sammy flinched at the softness at which he said the name, the pure fondness.

“Lily and I went to college together. Me, and Lily, and her brother. Jack.” Sammy said, and it was taking every single ounce of self-preservation not to start sobbing. Sammy had not said Jack’s name out loud, not to another person, in a very long time.

“Holy shit, Sammy, I’m so sorry, if I’d known you’d known him personally I would have never said that –”

“We all had a class together,” Sammy said, knowing that if he stopped to respond to Ben, he’d never get it out. His entire body was shaking as it was. “First semester of Sophomore year. A reporting and research class, I think? I found out they both wanted to go into broadcast journalism too. We started studying together and after some time, we became friends. The next year, we got an apartment together, all three of us. I – I’d never felt at home with a group of people before, never felt safe like this, and I got that with them. They were my family.

“Out of college, the three of us had a slot on an AM radio show together. Moved to fucking _Florida_ for it. Spent a few years there, then Jack and I went on to be shock jocks. Lily didn’t want to come. And then …”

“And then?” Ben repeated, softness not subsided.

And then. Sammy didn’t know how to even say it. Saying it meant watching Ben’s face fall. It meant seeing everything he’d built here crumble into the earth until all that was left was Sammy staring into their outraged faces.

Sammy took a deep breath. “In college, Lily dated a bit, and she didn’t have a lot of friends, but she had enough that often it would just be me and Jack.” Sammy paused, partly out of utter fear, but partly because how did he even summarize himself and Jack in a way that truly captured everything they were? “Goddamn it, why can’t I fucking say it? Even now, with literally nothing left to lose, I can’t.” Sammy said, shaking his head. What had he always told himself? _Coward._

Ben looked at Sammy for a long time, and Sammy didn’t look back, but he could feel the power of it.

“I – I think I might understand. Correct me if I’m wrong?” Sammy nodded because there was nothing else he could do. Couldn’t pry a single sound out. Ben scooted closer to Sammy, and Sammy wanted nothing more than to push him away, but he just sat and waited for the end of the world. “So it was you, and Jack, and Lily. Which, later, turned to you and Jack. For a long time, it was just you and Jack. Is that right?”

“Yeah. That’s right,” Sammy choked out.

“Again, please, please correct me if I have any of this wrong. I don’t want to assume. I just want to understand you.” Ben looked like he was going to cry, Sammy was trying his best not to cry, and he was shaking so much he could barely breathe. “Sammy, you and Jack. Were you together? Fuck. Sorry. _Are_ you together? Or am I wrong?”

Sammy put his face in his hands. He couldn’t look at Ben.

“We – Jack and I – I just … you’re not wrong.”

Sammy waited. Waited for the yelling, to hear Ben get up and slam the door behind him as he left, for any one of the dozens of possibilities he’d imagined. But it was quiet. It was quiet, and then he felt a pair of arms around him, even as Sammy remained in the corner of the couch with his knees in his chest and his face in his hands. Ben just stayed there, not saying anything for a minute, and Sammy didn’t know what to do. What was – what was he doing? Couldn’t Ben see that he didn’t deserve this? Sammy had been lying to him for _years_ and would never forgive himself. But Ben was, what? What was this?

“Sammy,” Ben said, voice muffled as his face was still shoved up against Sammy’s shoulder. “Sammy, listen to me. I don’t care, okay? I love you. I know this probably isn’t how you wanted to tell me, but I’m so glad you did.”

Whatever had been keeping Sammy teetering on the line between _hanging on_ and _a total wreck_ , it was gone now. Sammy cried. 

“Ben, I don’t understand. You should hate me right now.”

“I could never hate you, got it? I love you, no matter what. I don’t care that you didn’t tell me. You weren’t ready, and that’s fine. The only thing that matters right now is that you know that I love you, unconditionally. Love is love, and the only thing I hate is that we live in a world that made you so afraid.”

“But I’m a fraud. A fake. I’ve been lying to you since day one. Everything you know about me is a lie.”

“I don’t care. I forgive you.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that.” Ben removed his arms from Sammy, but he didn’t let go entirely, instead grabbing Sammy’s hand. On instinct, Sammy wanted to flinch away. There was something so intimate about this, and it scared him. Ben knew him more deeply than anyone that wasn’t Jack, and while every impulse told him to pull away before it got worse, Sammy craved it. “You are allowed to be whoever you are around me, and I still love you. Even if you are scared, and even if you have a boyfriend, and even if –”

“I don’t – he’s not …”

“Wait, I don’t understand. You said that you were together.”

Sammy didn’t want to say it, but he didn’t want Ben to call Jack his boyfriend ever again. It wasn’t true. Calling Jack his boyfriend made it sound like they were having fun, like they were teenagers who didn’t know the horrors of the world.

“We were – we are – god, I hate this. Jack wasn’t my boyfriend,” Sammy said darkly, hating how the phrase sounded out loud. He loved Jack more than he knew he could ever love anyone, but the words still made him dizzy. “He’s my fiancé.”

“OH,” Ben said, almost as if he understood, and who knew a single word could hold so much meaning? “I understand. He’s your Emily.”

“Yeah,” Sammy said, and he didn’t know what did it. Maybe it was Ben finally understanding who Sammy had lost, or maybe it was Sammy beginning to understand who he had not. But he relaxed into Ben’s touch, into his strong grip and smooth skin.

“You can tell me as much or as little as you want, and later, if you want, you can tell me everything about him and about everything else that brought you here. We don’t have to do it now, and we don’t have to do it today. Whatever you choose, it’s good enough. You are good enough, and I love you, and you don’t have to hide from me.”

Sammy didn’t know if he believed any of it, but he was grateful for Ben. He didn’t know what he’d see the next time he went to town. If everyone had taken Lily’s word and would taunt him at the grocery store or scorn him on the street. He didn’t know what he would do then. If he would follow through on his plan to get the hell out, if he would give up, or if he would take a page out of Ben’s book and keep fighting. He didn’t know much of anything that came next, and quite frankly, he didn’t care to think about it.

But for now, at this moment and at this minute it didn’t matter. Because Ben forgave him for everything, without a literal second’s thought. Ben was still here, and Sammy was still here, and for this tiny moment in time, as they sat on this shitty couch staring at bare walls, whatever was waiting did not matter. He was alive and he was awake and he wasn’t all right, but he was somewhere closer.

Sammy didn’t know the last time he’d been anything approaching all right, so know what? He’d fucking take it. 


End file.
